Recently, there has been a push to rethink how electric power is provided to consumers of such power. In conventional approaches, relatively large power plants burn fossil fuels to provide electric power to consumers. Typically, these power plants are controlled by private entities that bill consumers as a function of an amount of power utilized by the consumers over some period of time. A growing concern with respect to these types of power systems is the pollution that is generated by such systems, as well as the centralized nature of such systems. For example, if a natural disaster or other unexpected event occurred that caused a power system to be destroyed or temporarily go off-line, undesirable consequences may occur. For instance, millions of people may go months or even years without electric power if one of such conventional power systems is disabled.
In an attempt to reduce carbon emissions and other pollutants caused by these conventional power systems, distributed power systems that employ renewable energy to generate electric power have been manufactured and deployed. These types of power systems include, but are not limited to, wind turbine farms, hydro-turbines, solar panel fields, geothermal power systems, and the like. While these types of systems offer a promising alternative to the conventional power grid, there are some deficiencies corresponding to such systems. For instance, these types of systems generally output variable amounts of power over time, dependent upon time of day, weather conditions, etc., thereby rendering it difficult to meet changing demands of consumers.
The increased use of stochastic renewable resources, based on wind, solar, etc., may place pressure on the operational model of the conventional power grid. Various approaches can be used to compensate for variations in renewable generation. For instance, these approaches can include increased energy storage, fossil fuel backup generation (source following), controlling loads, operation over a larger geographic area, or a combination thereof to mitigate a likelihood of occurrence of a significant increase or decrease in power. However, difficulties associated with these approaches may intensity as a percentage of generation based on renewable resources increases. Moreover, grids over smaller geographic areas may be particularly susceptible to variations in generation as compared to conventional macrogrids.
Various approaches have conventionally been employed on the load side to attempt to deal with variations in generated electricity within a grid. For instance, utilities conventionally control power devices, such as air conditioners; however, such control tends to be on a slow time scale, usually with manual intervention. By way of another example, third-party vendors commonly provide demand response contracts, whereby they can bid a demand response similar to how generation is bid in the electricity markets, responding in hours or fractions thereof. According to another example, some home automation architectures are conventionally utilized for home energy management using sensors and actuators with centralized computers to manage home energy usage. Following this example, some conventional products strive to implement energy-saving architectures. In accordance with an illustration, users can program devices to respond to external commands communicated via information technology networks (e.g., the devices can be remotely controlled by a pre-programmed personal computer or manual commands initiated by a user). According to another illustration, some appliance manufacturers have provided products that can respond to external signals. For instance, some manufacturers have integrated sensors with actuators in smart UPS devices that, for example, can turn off printers when a computer is not drawing power.